5 INTRODUCTION WHO IS INCITE! WOMEN OF COLOR AGAINST VIOLENCE? INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing. Nationally, INCITE! s work is coordinated by a collective of women of color from across the country who work to support local grassroots organizing activities that challenge all forms of violence against women of color and their communities. INCITE! is a national network of local chapters and affiliates in over 10 cities, and a broad base of individual members and supporters across the country and transnationally. WHY THIS TOOLKIT? INCITE! created this toolkit to support the work of our local chapters, affiliates, and allies in raising awareness around and challenging an often invisible form of violence against women of color in the U.S. When we think about police brutality, we tend to think primarily about the experiences of young men of color perceived to be heterosexual, and not about police brutality women and trans people of color experience daily. Art by Cristy C. Road, croadcore.org When we think about violence against women, we tend to think about interpersonal and community violence, like domestic violence and sexual assault, and not gender-based violence by law enforcement agents. As a result, very little information and very few resources on police brutality and other forms of law enforcement violence against women of color and trans people of color exist at the national level. The marginalization of a gendered political analysis of state violence also de-prioritizes the work of developing community alternatives for safety, support, healing, and accountability from domestic violence, sexual violence, homophobic/transphobic violence, and other kinds of gender-based violence within our communities. To support women of color and trans people of color survivors of police brutality, as well as individuals and groups who are working to raise awareness of and fight police brutality against women and trans people of color, we wanted to bring together as much information as possible, as well as resources and organizing tools and ideas developed by groups across the country, in one place. It is intended as an educational resource for activists and organizers, and provides some examples of organizing tools and strategies. WHAT DO WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY WOMEN OF COLOR & TRANS PEOPLE OF COLOR? Recognizing that police brutality and other forms of law enforcement violence often serve as tools for policing and enforcing gender and sexual conformity along with power relations based on race, class, immigration status and ability, this toolkit focuses on the experiences of people of color who experience gender-based state violence. When we say women of color and trans people of color we mean people of color who experience law enforcement violence and who identify as women, transgender, queer, Two-Spirit, lesbiana/lesbian, bisexual, bulldaggers, aggressives, dykes, gay, butch, genderqueer or gender non-conforming, whose experiences are generally marginalized by movements resisting state violence. Please visit for more info! P. 1

6 INTRODUCTION WHAT IS LAW ENFORCEMENT VIOLENCE? In this toolkit, we use the term "law enforcement violence" to include violence against women of color and trans people of color by local and state police, immigration authorities (i.e. ICE, DHS and Border Patrol), federal law enforcement agencies (i.e. FBI, DEA, Customs and Border Protection), military forces, and private security. WHAT IS THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX? Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization formed to abolish the prison-industrial complex (more info at defines the prison-industrial complex or PIC, as a complicated system situated at the intersection of governmental and private interests that uses prisons and policing as a failed "solution" to social, political and economic problems. The PIC depends upon the oppressive systems of racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. It includes human rights violations, the death penalty, industry and labor issues, policing, courts, media, community powerlessness, the imprisonment of political prisoners, and the elimination of dissent. WHAT IS IN THIS TOOLKIT? The toolkit includes: Fact sheets describing different kinds and locations of law enforcement violence experienced by women and trans people of color; Ideas for documenting and organizing around law enforcement violence against women and trans people of color and for building responses to violence in our communities that don't rely on law enforcement; Sample workshops; Sample surveys and flyers; A list of resources; A resource CD with reports, tools and other information about law enforcement violence against women and trans people of color, participatory research and organizing strategies. WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THIS TOOLKIT? We are incredibly grateful to all of the chapters, affiliates, allies and partners who participated in and contributed to the creation of this toolkit, including the INCITE! Law Enforcement Violence Working Group (INCITE! Binghamton, INCITE! Denver, INCITE! New Orleans, Sisterfire NYC, INCITE! DC, Sista II Sista, October 22nd Coalition, Escuela Popular Norteña, RFR, Prison Moratorium Project, BlackOUT! Arts Collective, Southwest Youth Collaborative, Critical Resistance, Creative Interventions, and Coalición de Derechos Humanos), Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA), FIERCE!, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the Audre Lorde Project, the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center, Community United Against Violence (CUAV), and the Young Women's Empowerment Project. Art work by the inimitable and inspiring Cristy C. Road! Please visit for more info! P. 2

7 INTRODUCTION HOW CAN I USE THIS TOOLKIT? We hope that this toolkit will help to: Integrate a gender analysis into our conversations and action around police brutality, the prison industrial complex, and state violence; Connect, support, and advance local organizing that addresses all forms of violence against women and trans people of color, including police brutality and other forms of state violence; Uncover and address the impacts of police brutality on all members of our communities, including women of color and trans people of color; Develop base-building projects that center the experiences of leadership of women and trans people of color who live at the dangerous intersections of multiple forms of interpersonal, community, and state gender-based violence, including youth, sex workers, poor and working class women and trans people of color, formerly incarcerated women and trans people of color, immigrants, and Native people; Challenge society's primary reliance on law enforcement agents to protect us from domestic violence, sexual assault, homophobic and transphobic violence and other forms of interpersonal and community violence; Collectively develop alternative responses to violence that do not rely on law enforcement agents who often perpetrate and permit violence against us rather than protect us. WHAT OTHER TOOLS ARE AVAILABLE? The toolkit is intended to be used along with INCITE!'s brochure Police Brutality Against Women of Color & Trans People of Color: A Critical Intersection of Gender Violence and State Violence. Copies of the brochure are available at or by writing us at STOP! Police Brutality Against Women of Color and Trans People of Color posters and palm cards are also available for local outreach. WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK! Please fill out the evaluation form at the back of the toolkit - tell us what you thought about it, how you used it, what was missing, what resources you are aware of that should be included, and anything else that would help us make it better! You can also fill out the evaluation form online at THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF THIS TOOLKIT AND THE ACCOMPANYING RESOURCE CD ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT Feel free to copy, download, distribute! Please visit for more info! P. 3

8 Please visit for more info! P. 4

9 POLICING GENDER Gender policing has, like race- based policing, always been a part of this nation s bloody history. - TransJustice 1, Call To First Annual Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice, 2005 Law enforcement agencies not only enforce systemic power relations based on race and class through racial profiling, race-based policing, and targeting of low-income communities of color, they also police gender lines, enforcing dominant racialized gender norms. Yet, the gendered aspects and manifestations of law enforcement violence are often invisible in organizing and advocacy around both police brutality and gender-based violence. ENFORCING THE GENDER BINARY Sometimes police enforcement of the gender binary the idea that there are only two genders, male and female, each of which is characterized by specific conduct and appearance is obvious. For instance, until just a few decades ago, cops used to enforce what were known as sumptuary laws, which required individuals to wear gender appropriate clothing, and subjected people to arrest for impersonating another gender. 2 Today, such regulations remain in effect in prisons, and are enforced through disciplinary infractions and punitive segregation. 3 These regulations still inform law enforcement conduct - for instance, the New York City Police Department's current arrest paperwork still has a box to check for impersonating a female. Additionally, requests for identification, which may not match a person's gender identity, often lead to police presumptions that transgender people are fraudulent, deceitful, or inherently suspicious. This can in turn lead to verbal abuse, harassment, and physical abuse. Law enforcement officers also regularly subject trans and gender non-conforming people to invasive and abusive searches to satisfy their curiosity, humiliate, or to involuntarily assign a gender based on genital status. 4 An African American transgender woman arrested by LAPD and taken to the county jail reported: The officers wanted to see my chest. They wanted to see if I had tits or not. They reportedly came into her cell and instructed her to remove her shirt. After she complied, they left. 5 A transgender man was arrested during a political protest in San Francisco. He showed the officer a drivers license that identified him as legally male and was placed in a holding pen with the other male detainees. One officer got curious about the activist s gender status and came into the cell, then reportedly pushed him around, dragged him out and belligerently accused him of having a fraudulent identification card. A second officer asked him if he had a dick and groped his crotch and chest to verify his gender. 6 Please visit for more info! P. 5

10 POLICING GENDER Trans and gender non-conforming people of color are also often arbitrarily arrested and subjected to brutality by police for using the wrong bathroom even though there is generally no law requiring individuals who use bathrooms designated as for men or women to have any particular set of characteristics. 7 For instance: In Washington, D.C., in 2004 an African American woman who plays on a women s football team was violently arrested after using the women s bathroom at a local restaurant. The Esperanza Center in San Antonio, TX reports that, in 2003, a female attorney wearing a suit and tie was arrested for using the women s bathroom. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City has organized around the case of Christina Sforza, a transgender woman of color who went with two friends to a McDonald s in New York City in When Ms. Sforza went to use the bathroom, the men s toilet was out of order and a McDonald s employee told her to use the women s. While she was inside, someone began yelling I m going to kill you, faggot. I m going to kill you while banging on the door. When she opened the door, a man in a blue McDonald s shirt hit her repeatedly about the head and body with a lead pipe and then choked her, saying, I m going to kill you, you fucking fag, I don t want any fags in here. A crowd of McDonald s staff and customers cheered, yelling kill the fag. Fearing for their safety, one of Ms. Sforza s friends called the police for help. When the cops arrived on the scene, they talked to the man who had beaten Ms. Sforza, who told them that she had attacked him. Ms. Sforza was arrested, placed in handcuffs despite injuries to her arm, refused medical treatment, and subsequently charged with assault with intent to cause physical injury and harassment in the second degree. She later attempted to file a criminal complaint against the man who beat her, only to be turned away on six different occasions, the last time on threat of arrest for attempting to make a false report. 8 Fear of such abuse and arbitrary arrests leads many trans and gender non-conforming people of color to avoid using bathrooms in public places, often leading to severe and painful health consequences. Please visit for more info! P. 6

11 POLICING GENDER PUNISHING GENDER NON-CONFORMITY White trans activist, Leslie Feinberg, described her experience of gender policing as follows: [t]he reality of why I was arrested was as cold as the cell s cement floor: I am considered a masculine female. That s a gender violation, even where the laws are not written down, police are empowered to carry out merciless punishment for sex and gender difference. 9 In addition to arbitrary and punitive arrests and prosecutions, trans and gender non-conforming people, and particularly trans and gender non-conforming people of color, are also subjected to I know it wasn't because of me Let the justice system call it I'm a big black dyke With no fears and not afraid to fight - excerpt from poem by Terrain Dandridge, one of the New Jersey For more info about the New Jersey 7, please see the Sep 2008 LeftTurn article in this toolkit, Re-Thinking The Norm In Police/Prison Violence & Gender Violence: Critical Lessons From the New Jersey 7 transphobic and homophobic verbal abuse and punishment, in the form of physical violence, for failure to comply with existing racialized norms of gender identity and expression. For instance: A Black butch lesbian arrested in Boston for disruptive behavior was handcuffed excessively tightly. When she complained, an officer responded you want to act like a man, I'll treat you like a man! and punched her in the chest, yelling at her to shut up bitch! She was subsequently shackled and charged with assault on a police officer. 11 According to the New York City AIDS Housing Network, a police officer walked a Latina butch lesbian arrested at a demonstration in New York City by cells holding men, telling her you think you're a man, I'll put you in there and we'll see what happens to you. Recently, Duanna Johnson, a Black transgender woman arrested in Memphis, refused to respond to an officer who called her a he-she and faggot and was savagely beaten by one officer while another restrained her. No other officer in the area where she was being held intervened to stop the violence, demonstrating the systemic and uncontested nature of gender and homophobic policing. 12 Sometimes gender policing is not so obvious, but is just as profound and devastating. Police officers also engage in more subtle gender policing: individuals perceived to be violating racialized gender norms are consciously or subconsciously framed by police as inherently disorderly, and therefore more likely to become objects of police suspicion and surveillance, and to be presumed to be threatening, criminal, fraudulent, deceitful, mentally unstable, substance abusers, or potentially violent. Such presumptions result in profiling, harassment, verbal abuse, arbitrary stops and detentions, invasive and abusive searches, use of excessive force during encounters with police, and ultimately, arrest and punishment or denial of protection by law enforcement as crime victims. Vaguely worded quality of life regulations [see fact sheet on Quality of Life Policing in this toolkit] provide law enforcement officers with even greater discretion and latitude to police race and gender, allowing for arbitrary arrests for vague offenses such as "disorderly conduct," lewd conduct, or loitering. Please visit for more info! P. 7

12 POLICING GENDER ENDNOTES 1 TransJustice is a New York City-based political group created by and for Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people of color. For more info, go to: 2 In the era of Stonewall, laws against cross dressing were common. Indeed, the most recent case of such archaic laws being stuck down was in San Diego, just a handful of years ago Many of them required that a person had to be wearing three items of their birth gender s clothing. Some were more stringent, with some biological females having to get special licenses in order to wear pants in public. Gwen Smith, Transsexual Terrorism, Washington Blade, October 3, 2003; see also Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, Beacon Press (1999); Phyllis Frye, (citing Houston Code struck down in 1981). 3 Personal communication, Julia Sudbury, author, Global Lockdown: Race, Gender and the Prison-Industrial Complex (Routledge 2005). 4 Amnesty International, Stonewalled: Police Abuse and Misconduct Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People in the U.S. 13, AMR 51/122/2005 (2005). 5 Id. at Id. 7 Id. at See also, Amnesty International Action, USA-New York Police Department Serious allegations of abuse of transgender women (update), July Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, Beacon Press (1999). 10 The excerpt from Terrain Dandridge s poem is available as a result of the media justice work done by the Bay Area NJ4 Solidarity Committee. The New Jersey 7 is a group of seven young Black lesbians profiled and arrested by police, four of whom were also incarcerated, for defending themselves from a homophobic attack and sexual assault. For more information, see Re-Thinking The Norm In Police/Prison Violence & Gender Violence: Critical Lessons From the New Jersey 7, Left Turn Magazine, September (Reprinted in this toolkit.) 11 Amnesty International, Stonewalled: Police Abuse and Misconduct Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People in the U.S. 64, AMR 51/122/2005 (2005) and personal communication, Dr. Rebecca Young, Barnard College. 12 LeiLani Dowell, Memphis Cops Brutally Beat Transwoman, Workers World, July 9, Please visit for more info! P. 8

13 KHAKI & BLUE: A KILLER COMBINATION In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the US Army was deployed to protect displaced women while the National Guard was in Iraq. Many poor Black women were raped while the US Army guarded shelters in the South. 1 Meanwhile, many of our troops in Iraq were engaging, and continue to engage, in the rape, torture, and murder of innocent civilians. As military and domestic police forces work ever closer together in a hyper-militarized world, women, children and trans folks of color both here and abroad are increasingly subjected to law enforcement violence that shares many characteristics, forms, tactics, targets, language and even personnel with the US and other military forces. 2 IN IRAQ Art by Cristy C. Road, croadcore.org An Iraqi woman in her 70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib after being arrested without charge in July Images of US female soldiers engaging in the sexual torture of imprisoned Iraqi men have been sensationalized, and made national and international headlines for weeks. In reality, the majority of rape and sexual torture by US military forces is at the hands of American male soldiers, against Iraqi women and children as well as fellow US women soldiers. These atrocities are far more prevalent, but they go unreported, since they are business as usual. 4 The US Military has trained the new Iraqi police force, who now follow the model of a hostile occupying army, and engage in arbitrary arrests of civilians, as well as widespread torture of detainees, including women and children, in pre-trial detention facilities. 5 Hundreds of innocent Iraqi girls and women (some as young as 9, others in their 70s) have been arrested, detained, abused, raped and tortured by US-trained Iraqi police, in some cases to pressure them to collaborate with the Occupation, and to inform against the resistance. 6 IN THE U.S. Since SWAT teams, modeled on the US Military s Special Forces, were introduced in the 1970s, police departments of major US cities such as Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles have increasingly been trained in aggressive military philosophy, strategy, tactics, and weaponry, and to perceive entire groups of people and neighborhoods as "threats." In fact, most police units in the US have trained with active duty military experts in special operations or police officers with military special operations experience. 7 Police officers training in counter-terrorism is often conducted through videos produced by the Israeli Army, which is known for discriminatory policies and its brutality against Palestinian women and children. 8 Over the past two decades, policing of the border between the US and Mexico has become increasingly militarized, as evidenced by the introduction and integration of military units in the border region and changes to Border Patrol to make it more like the US military in equipment, structure, and tactics. 9 Please visit for more info! P. 9

14 KHAKI & BLUE: A KILLER COMBINATION Many women who cross the border report that rape was the price of not being apprehended, deported, or of having their confiscated documents returned. -- Sylvanna Falcon 10 These military tactics include the use of rape as a weapon to literally enforce the border on women s bodies. Rape of Mexican, Central American, and Latina women at the border by Border Patrol and military forces is widespread. Policing of political demonstrations is also evidence of increasing militarization, as officers are trained to use military formations and weapons to disrupt and disperse lawful protests. 11 IN PALESTINE In August 2007, there were 572 Israeli roadblocks within the Occupied West Bank, a 52% increase over August 2005, not including checkpoints along the Green Line. These chokingpoints, every single one of which is illegal, severely restrict women and children s movement through militarized police blockades. Data released by the United Nations indicates that Palestinian stillbirths increased by 56% in one year (from 1999 to 2000), following the Israeli clampdown on the West Bank, carried out in response to the popular uprising against the illegal occupation. Because of the checkpoints, hundreds of pregnant women deliver their babies in dangerous situations and locations because Israeli soldiers prevent them from reaching a hospital. 13 IN THE U.S. On September 4, 2008, Naheel Abu Ridah, seven months pregnant, was rushed to the hospital in severe pain. When she reached the Huwara checkpoint with three relatives, soldiers refused to let them cross by car despite the family s plea s. She delivered in the car, and the baby was born dead. The checkpoint commander was sentenced in a disciplinary hearing to 14 days in an army prison. 12 In many communities of color across the US, and most recently and obviously in New Orleans, police set up checkpoints in neighborhoods and public housing, routinely stopping, demanding identification from, questioning and searching residents. 14 IN AFGHANISTAN In 2006, US-appointed Afghan President Hamid Karzai drafted a proposal to re-establish the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, raising serious concerns about potential abuse of the rights of women and vulnerable groups. Under the Taliban, the vice and virtue police ruthlessly beat women publicly for, among other things, showing their wrists, hands, or ankles, or not being accompanied by a close male relative. They stopped women from educating girls in home-based schools, working, and begging. 15 IN THE U.S. Art by Favianna Rodriguez, favianna.com Women of color, and particularly transgender women of color, are routinely profiled as sex workers. Police often cite what we are wearing, who we are talking to and where we are hanging out as evidence that we are engaged in lewd conduct or soliciting sex for money, and as an excuse to verbally and physically abuse us, refer to us as ho s, bitches and prostitutes, to sexually harass us, and arbitrarily search, question, detain, and arrest us. 16 Please visit for more info! P. 10

15 KHAKI & BLUE: A KILLER COMBINATION ENDNOTES 1 See, for example, C. Neville, How We Survived the Flood, and A. Bierria, M. Liebenthal, and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, To Render Ourselves Visible: `Women of Color Organizing and Hurricane Katrina, both in What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation, Ed. South End Press Collective. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007 (28-30, and 31-47); Katrina Rapes Counted; U.S. Cuts Social Programs, 2 See T. McClary and A. Ritchie, In the Shadows of the War on Terror: Persistent Police Brutality and Abuse in the United States 19, a shadow report to the UN Human Rights Committee, May L. Harding, Women--the Other Iraqi Prisoners, The Guardian, May 20, 2004, Online at: 4 L. Harding, Women--the Other Iraqi Prisoners, The Guardian, May 20, 2004, Online at: Z. Byron Wolf, Sex Assaults Against Women in the Military Epidemic : GAOReport, abcnews.go.com, July 31, See, for example, Yifat Sussking: Iraqi Police Commit Rape Armed,Trained, and Funded by the US February 22, 2007, CommonDreams.org, 6 Women are arrested in violation of international law, not because of crimes they have committed, but because of their potential intelligence value, as daughters or wives of Baa th party members. Since November 2005, the Organization of Women s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) has conducted a Women s Prison Watch project and has found that torture and rape are common procedure of investigation in police stations. At least nine Iraqi organizations, as well as Amnesty International, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq and the Brussels Tribunal have documented the sexualized torture of Iraqi women while in police custody. These include Women s Will, Occupation Watch, the Women s Rights Association, the Iraqi League, the Iraqi National Association of Human Rights, the Human Rights Voice of Freedom, the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Iraqi National Media and Culture Organization. Most of this documentation is available in the OWFI annual reports, available online through 7 P. Kraska, Militarizing Criminal Justice: Exploring the Possibilities, J. Pol. & Mil. Soc. 27: (1999). 8 In addition to the Israeli military training the police forces of major US cities, private companies staffed by Israeli military officers hold training camps in the US for various private security businesses here. One such business venture is the Instinctive Shooting International, whose homepage proudly asserts: Since 1993, ISI, Inc. has successfully provided high caliber training and consulting services to Police Departments, SWAT teams, Military Personnel, Government Agencies and Private Security entities throughout the United States. At ISI, Inc., we believe in training that not only meets, but exceeds current professional training standards. We firmly believe in proactive, innovative and practical training methods that work in the real world. 9 National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Preliminary Report and Findings of the Emergency National Border Justice and Solidarity Community Tour: Militarization and Impunity at the Border. October 2006; Dunn, Timothy, The Militarization of the US-Mexico Border : Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, Sylvanna Falcon, Rape as a Weapon of War: Advancing Human Rights or Women at the US-Mexico Border, Social Justice, Summer 2001; 28-2, pp See K. Williams, Our Enemies in Blue , Soft Skull Press, 2004 (republished, South End Press 2006). 12 Soldiers Prevent Pregnant, Bleeding Woman From Crossing Checkpoint And She Gives Birth To A Stillborn Baby, Palestine Monitor, September 18, 2008, 13 See, for example, Israeli soldier gets 14 days in prison after a Palestinian delivered a stillborn baby after being delayed at checkpoint. The article reports that, between 2000 and 2006, at least 68 Palestinian women gave birth at Israeli checkpoints, including 35 who miscarried and five who died in childbirth. 14 See, e.g., New Orleans to Combat Crime Wave with Overnight Checkpoints, Fox News, January 10, 2007; Latino Groups Slam Richmond Police Checkpoints, cbs4.com, August 28, 2008; Corey Roush, Warrantless Public Housing Searches: Individual Violations or Community Solutions, American Criminal Law Review, Vol. 34, See the news archive of the Revolutionary Afghan Women s association, at 16 For more information, see the Policing Sex Work fact sheet in this toolkit. Please visit for more info! P. 11

16 Please visit for more info! P. 12

17 IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT LAW ENFORCEMENT VIOLENT AGAINST MIGRANT WOMEN & TRANSPEOPLE Law enforcement violence against migrant women and transpeople including sexual abuse is enabled by U.S. immigration policy. The U.S. government s strategy of militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, and anti-immigrant interior enforcement through the use of raids, expansion of immigration detention facilities, and collaboration between federal immigration enforcement and local police agencies 1 creates an environment where immigrant women are vulnerable to violence and sexual assault. BACKGROUND FACTS Women and Migration. The International Organization for Migration estimates that there are over 192 million migrants in the world today, over 3% of the world s total population. Over 95 million of these migrants are women. 2 In the U.S., over 55% of immigrants both documented and undocumented are women. 3 Anti-Immigrant Law Enforcement. During the past fifteen years, the U.S. government has increased its spending on anti-immigrant law enforcement almost tenfold since 1993 ($1.5 billion: INS). In 2008, President Bush s budget called for a total of $13.6 billion for anti-immigrant law enforcement. This total included $8.8 billion to hire 17,800 border patrol agents, and provide for the construction of 370 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico Border. 4 VIOLENCE AT THE BORDER Violence against migrant women at the border is not random or isolated: as representatives of the UN Development Fund for Women report, at least 60 to 70% of undocumented women migrants who cross the border alone experience sexual abuse. 5 The danger is even greater for migrants from Central American countries, who must pass through two militarized borders between Guatemala and the U.S. and between Mexico and the U.S. Border Patrol and other law enforcement agents prey on migrant women s vulnerability: many women who cross the border report that rape was the price of not being apprehended, deported, or of having their confiscated documents returned. For example: Luz Lopez and Norma Contreras were repeatedly sexually assaulted by a Border Patrol agent who captured them crossing the Rio Grande near El Paso, TX. We are not the first, nor the last, Contreras said. 6 A California INS officer was convicted in 2004 of demanding sex and cash from two Chinese women seeking asylum. 7 On September 3, 1993, Juanita Gomez and her female cousin crossed the border between Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona to meet two male friends to go shopping. Larry Selders, a Border Patrol Agent, stopped all four people, but only detained Gomez and her cousin. Selders then told Gomez and her cousin that he would not take them to the Border Patrol department for deportation if they would have sex with him; after both women refused, he raped Gomez. 8 A detective investigating the women s complaint told them he didn t believe them, asking Isn t it true that you are a prostitute? 9 Please visit for more info! P. 13

18 IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT Haime Flores was stopped at a checkpoint and taken to a Border Patrol station. After it was determined that her documents were valid, the agents went on to detain her for six hours and order a search, during which a female agent inserted her finger into Flores vagina while three male officers laughed and joked. No contraband was found. 10 While anti-immigrant forces have focused on alleged rapes by fellow migrants and coyotes as justification for stirring up racist anti-immigrant sentiment and calling for enhanced border enforcement and militarization, they have been notably silent on rapes by Border Patrol and other law enforcement agents, as well as the increased vulnerability to sexual abuse created by intensified anti-immigrant measures forcing migrant women into more desperate and desolate border crossings. VIOLENCE IN THE INTERIOR Since 1996, the U.S. government has engaged in what it views as a comprehensive interior enforcement strategy. The objective: to protect communities by identifying and deporting individuals in violation of immigration laws in non-border areas. Immigration law enforcement officials have conducted raids at schools, shopping centers, and workplaces, sweeping the area for undocumented immigrants. 11 In February 2007 ICE agents stormed into Nelly Amaya s home. When she asked to see a warrant -- which the agents did not have -- they roughed her up, injuring her arm, as they frisked and arrested her, and took her away in her pajamas. While in detention she suffered an asthma attack, but was denied treatment. She was released 10 hours later in her pajamas with no money in the dead of winter. 12 INS officer James Riley was arrested in May 1990, after conducting an unauthorized immigration one-man raid at gunpoint at a Van Nuys bar. Riley abducted and raped a 24-year-old woman from the bar after telling her that she was under arrest for lacking legal documents to be in the United States. One month later, over seventeen women had filed charges against him, recounting similar abuse. 13 Saida Uzmanzor s nursing nine-month old daughter was removed from her by ICE agents and placed in foster care after she was detained during a raid. 14 In addition, the federal government has begun to enter into memorandums of understanding with local police offices, deputizing local law enforcement agencies to act as immigration agents. In 2008, President Bush s immigration budget called for $4.8 billion for interior enforcement of immigration law, which included funds to train state and local law enforcement officials in immigration enforcement. 15 The increasing presence of immigration enforcement in the interior leads women of color to see law enforcement agents and the criminal legal system as further threats to their safety. In December 2007, Miriam Aviles was pulled over by Tucson police and asked for identification. The officer called Border Patrol, and then induced labor in Ms. Aviles by physically forcing her into the Border Patrol vehicle. Ms. Aviles spent the night in immigration detention, and was not taken to a clinic until the following day, where she was badgered by a Border Patrol agent to hurry up and have her baby. 16 Please visit for more info! P. 14

19 IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT A school-based police officer arrested five months pregnant 18 year-old high school student Karina Acosta in her classroom, and held her until ICE came to take her away. She had been cited for a parking violation and not having a drivers license three days before. 17 Terwinder, a Sikh mother of two U.S. born children, was arrested and subject to deportation after police officers who were helping her with a flat tire found out she had an outstanding deportation order. She had lived in the U.S. for 12 years with her family, running a small business. 18 Fear of deportation was identified as the primary reason that 64% of undocumented women in a San Francisco study did not seek social services. 19 VIOLENCE IN IMMIGRATION DETENTION In 1996, Congress passed immigration reform legislation that led to the explosion of the immigration detention system. It is now the fastest-growing incarceration program in the country, leading the rapid expansion of the prisonindustrial complex in the U.S. In 2005, the Department of Homeland Security detained 237,667 individuals: an average of 19,619 per day. 20 Christina Madraso, a transsexual woman, sought asylum in the U.S. after being badly beaten based on her gender identity in Mexico. However, her nightmare continued when she was detained in the Krome Service Processing Center, where she was placed in the men s ward, and faced harassment by guards and other detainees. She was then transferred into an isolation unit, where she was sexually assaulted twice by the same guard. After the second rape, INS officials told her that she could either transfer to a mental institution, county prison, or give up her asylum claim. 21 A Chinese immigrant woman miscarried her twins after she appeared for a routine interview with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, and unexpectedly became subject to a violent deportation attempt. Another pregnant immigrant woman from Cameroon miscarried while she was under ICE custody after her requests for medical care went ignored for two days. 22 Victoria Arellano, an undocumented transgender woman with HIV, died in an ICE detention facility in California after being denied necessary medication to prevent opportunistic infections, despite organizing efforts by fellow detainees to obtain medical treatment for her. 23 The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights has launched HURRICANE, an initiative to document and collectively organize around violations of migrants rights for more info, go to: Please visit for more info! P. 15

20 IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT ENDNOTES 1 Over-Raided, Under Siege: U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Migrants, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, 2008; H. Nimr, Human Rights & Human Security At Risk: The Consequences of Placing Immigration Enforcement and Services in the Department of Homeland Security, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, 2003; National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Preliminary Report and Findings of the Emergency National Border Justice and Solidarity Community Tour: Militarization and Impunity at the Border, October 2006; T. Dunn, The Militarization of the US-Mexico Border : Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home, Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, Andrew Morrison, et al., THE INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION OF WOMEN, World Bank: Min Zhou, Contemporary Female Immigration to the United States: A Demographic Profile, WOMEN IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES (ed. Philippa Strum & Danielle Tarantano, 2002), Julia Gelatt, President Calls for $13 Billion in Border and Enforcement Funding in 2008, MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE (2008), available at: 5 Jennifer L. Pozner, Women s Debate Show Exposes Rape as Cost of Entry for Female Immigrants, WIMN s Voices Blog, (available at: Sylvanna Falcon, Rape as a Weapon of War: Advancing Human Rights or Women at the US- Mexico Border, Social Justice, Summer 2001; 28-2, pp 31-50; Gabriela Diaz and Gretchen Kuhner, Women Migrants in Transit and Detention in Mexico, Migration Policy Institute, 2007 (available at: 6 J. Light, Rape on the Border Baiting Immigrants Border Patrol Abuses; anti-immigrant politics, The Progressive, September Former INS Officer Gets 4-year Prison Term, Los Angeles Times, November 23, Crossing the Line: Human Rights Abuses Along the U.S. Border with Mexico Persist Amid Climate of Impunity, Human Rights Watch, 1995; Border Patrol Agent Pleads No Contest In Rape of Illegal Immigrant, ARIZONA REPUBLIC, July 28, See also Sylvanna Falcon, Rape as a Weapon of War: Advancing Human Rights for Women at the U.S.-Mexico Border, 28 SOCIAL JUSTICE 31 (2001). 9 Crossing the Line: Human Rights Abuses Along the U.S. Border with Mexico Persist Amid Climate of Impunity, Human Rights Watch, Crossing the Line: Human Rights Abuses Along the U.S. Border with Mexico Persist Amid Climate of Impunity, Human Rights Watch, Over-Raided, Under Siege: U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Migrants, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Over-Raided, Under Siege: U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Migrants, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Michael Connelly and Patricia Lerner, INS Agent Faces More Sex Charges, LOS ANGELES TIMES, June 15, Over-Raided, Under Siege: U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Migrants, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Julia Gelatt, President Calls for $13 Billion in Border and Enforcement Funding in 2008, MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE (2008), available at: 16 Over-Raided, Under Siege: U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Migrants, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Over-Raided, Under Siege: U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Migrants, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Over-Raided, Under Siege: U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Migrants, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Leslye Orloff & Rachel Little, Overview of Domestic Violence and Battered Immigrant Issues, available at 20Immigrant%20Women.pdf (citing CHRIS HOGELAND AND KAREN ROSEN, DREAMS LOST, DREAMS FOUND: UNDOCUMENTED WOMEN IN THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY 63 (Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Services 1991). 20 Dawn Konet and Jeanne Batalova, Spotlight on Immigration Enforcement in the United States, MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE (2007), available at: 21 Yves Colon, Life Became a Nightmare, MIAMI HERALD, September 7, Nina Bernstein, Protests Brew Over Attempt to Deport a Woman, NEW YORK TIMES, February 14, 2006; Ruben Rosario, Deportation Case Is No Model of Justice Served, ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS, November 7, Over-Raided, Under Siege: U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Migrants, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Please visit for more info! P. 16

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